This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 152

Chapter 152 - Every Day is a Gift

Upon their swift return to the safety of Dragonwrought Hold, the party unanimously voted to take something of a short break. Eve liked to think the decision motivated by important things like the need to train with the new items and abilities, Reginald’s need to make up for the sleep he lost on their trek back from through the Dead Fields, or the fact two of her friends had just gotten engaged and could perhaps use a bit of time to themselves, but in truth she supported the break for selfish reasons.

Her bed was fucking awesome.

Now, a discerning outside observer might wonder why someone who only needed a night’s sleep every other week or so cared so deeply about cloudweft silk sheets and phoenix feather down and whispertouch enchanted boxsprings, but said outsider would be missing the point entirely. If Eve was only going to get one night’s sleep in a fortnight, by Ayla’s crooked left tit it was going to be a good one.

The downside, of course, of spending months of adventuring effort and literal hundreds of gold assembling the comfiest sleeping arrangements known to man, elf, or dragon, was how remarkably difficult it became to convince oneself to get up.

At her current level, if she activated Defiant Charge, Eve could reach a grand total of twenty-four thousand, six hundred and fifty-five Willpower, every single point of which she found truly necessary to accomplish the herculean task of getting out of bed that first morning.

The truly divine scent wafting from the plate of freshly baked scones Piskern had delivered helped a little.

Even when she’d long met her needs for sleep, Eve spent hours lying back or sitting up in the absurdly lavish bed, doing a mix of daydreaming, reading a book or two she’d borrowed form Valya, or trying—and failing—to break the cipher on the Burendian journal she’d found. A number of these activities Eve underwent not because they particularly interested her, but because they allowed her more time amidst the pillows and blankets.

That wasn’t to say she completely wasted her time.

Eve worked her usual long hours at the training yard each day, practicing all sorts of tricks with the crown and her new ability. Most importantly, however, she finally had armor that could dissociate with her. A new realm of possibilities had opened.

Between the mistlerhide armor, her Manaweave underclothes, and now the crown’s ability to store any miscellaneous items on her person, Eve could dissipate part of all of her body mid combat without the fear of losing some vital piece of equipment. Day by day she practiced dodging all sorts of attacks by simply dissolving the area of her body that would otherwise be struck, working tirelessly to driver her reaction time lower and lower.

Most of this time she spent in what the Dragonwrought called the Evasion Training Chamber, but she affectionately referred to as the Slingshot Room. Several dozen enchanted slingshots fired off leather balls at random intervals, velocities, and directions, forcing Eve to remain constantly vigilant else receive a rather nasty bruise.

Come to think of it, she did wonder how exactly she bruised without any blood coursing through her veins before chalking it up to her usual explanation: magic bullshit.

Of course, becoming incorporeal didn’t exclusively provide defensive utility. As it turned out, stopping a floating cloud of Mana from getting into melee range was a lot more difficult than stopping a person. Initially, Eve had dismissed the prospect of offensive dissociation due to the simply fact that clouds of Mana couldn’t cast abilities, but the game changed when she discovered that disembodied heads floating on top of a cloud of Mana could.

Similarly, while she floated almost agonizingly slowly, upon dissociation she maintained any velocity she’d already had, meaning she could Charge in, dissociate to get around defenses or counterattacks, then reassociate just in time to land a swing with her bone club. The maneuver was complex and difficult to time correctly, but if she managed it right it made for a brutally difficult to stop attack.

With enough practice, Eve could always time it correctly.

She similarly devoted hours to various tricks and techniques built around keeping herself incorporeal and only materializing her head to throw a Mana Burst before dissipating once more, finding it a particularly effective tactic for dealing with flying, ranged opponents.

Her new ability to overfill her Mana pool also proved valuable. Of everything, it was definitively the most flexible of her new arsenal, allowing for everything from massively buffered pool of effective health to the option for truly obscene Mana Bursts to ridiculous levels of Strength from Mana Rush if she found herself in another situation with vast quantities of Mana nearby to refill with. The skill also came with an interesting feature.

Being overloaded made the Mana lines on her body brighter. A lot brighter.

Eve couldn’t tell if it had something to do with an inherent property of mistler hide or if the stuff simply started dissociating when exposed to so much power, but at about three times her Mana cap, her armor faded out just enough for the lines upon her skin to shine through. Of course, at that point they were so bright that none of her actual body was visible, but Eve still made a point of redrawing some of the lines to avoid tracing too accurate an outline of her figure.

Truth be told, she thought it looked badass. She spent a good hour staring in a mirror, pool brimming with Mana, as she fiddled with the precise design. Come an actual fight, she’d look intimidating as hells when her entire body started glowing with the dragonscale pattern and jagged web around the core at her chest. That is, she’d look intimidating if she hadn’t forgotten to revert the changes after rerouting the Mana lines to make a joke.

Then again, some enemies might find it even scarier to go into battle against a Unique with a giant glowing arrow and the text ‘I’m with stupid’ scrawled upon her forehead. Maybe they’d laugh so hard at her comedic genius they’d surrender then and there.

It was as she was messing with the dragonscale pattern to reroute a line that awkwardly bent around her knee that Wes and Preston found her.

“So,” Wes greeted, “are you excited for the wedding tomorrow?”

Eve froze. “The what now?”

Preston scowled. “The wedding.”

“Guys, you’ve been engaged for like two weeks. Don’t you have more planning to—”

“Alvin’s wedding,” Wes interrupted to correct her. “You know, the one we rsvp’d to?”

Eve blinked. “That’s tomorrow?”

Preston rubbed the bridge of his nose. “How did you not know that? The date was literally on the invitation.”

“Of course I read the date!” Eve exclaimed. “I know exactly what day the wedding is on. I just may or may not know what day today is.”

Preston sighed. “Please tell me you at least have a gift prepared.”

“Um…” Eve stopped short. “Every day is a gift?”

Wes snorted.

Eve exhaled. “What did you get them?”

“I got a jar of phantasmal cake flour that Lumy helped me with,” Preston explained. “Apparently it makes baked goods supernaturally light and fluffy.”

Wes grinned a wicked grin. “I got Mrs. Yir’s strawberry scone recipe.”

Eve’s eyes bulged. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“How? People have been trying to get that recipe out of her for decades!”

Wes crossed his arms proudly. “You’d be surprised how much people will tell you when you offer them enough gold to buy a house.”

Eve raised an eyebrow. “So you offered her one gold?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Wes nodded. “I know it’s a bit of a backwood, but I’ll never understand how the economy in Nowherested got so fucked up.”

“You have to give that recipe to Piskern,” Eve demanded. “Right now.”

“Not happening,” Wes said. “She only gave it to me because I told her it was a wedding gift. You know she’s a sucker for romance. I’m not going back on that now so you can have slightly better scones delivered to you daily.”

Eve glowered.

“Anyway,” Preston stepped in, “you need a gift. It’s bad form to go to a wedding without one. Even Reginald put together a lovely bracelet out of some old scales.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll find something,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I don’t have time to pull off the literal miracle Wes did, but there’s gotta be something around here that’ll make for a good wedding present. The vault’s got all sorts of weird shit in it.”

“Good luck with that,” Wes wished her as she made for the door.

“We’re flying to the lungeon at dawn tomorrow,” Preston called after her. “Make sure you’re dressed accordingly. This is a wedding, not a dungeon.”

“I mean, technically the lungeon is a dungeon,” Wes said.

Preston sighed.

Eve blinked at him. “Am I really the one you’re worried about dressing nicely?”

“No,” Preston said flatly. He jerked a thumb over at Wes. “But I can supervise him while he gets dressed.”

“Hey!” Wes protested.

Eve laughed. “Have fun. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.”

Preston nodded after her. “Good luck with your search.”

“It’ll be fine,” she called over her shoulder as she stepped out into the hallway. “The Dragonwrought vault has to have something worth giving, right?”

——

Eve buried her head in her hands and let out a long and agonized groan.

She leaned forward, sitting crosslegged on the stone floor of the vault. She had a problem. For all her searching, the Dragonwrought’s collection didn’t have a single item that would make for a good wedding gift.

It had three dozen.

“What do you think?” Eve looked up at Lumy, the only one with nothing better to do at three in the morning than help Eve find a gift. “Would they prefer the Mana lamp that keeps fried food crispy or the ritual candles for summoning butter elementals?”

Lumy flashed orange.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Eve said. “What with the restaurant, they’re probably gonna be inundated with food-based gifts.” She grabbed something from the pile before her. “Maybe they’d like the bath salts enchanted to make you smell like whatever your partner likes the most.”

Lumy glowed an angry red.

“Right, right, Lina’s a rusalka. The whole drowning thing. That’s why I have the septum piercing of water-breathing set aside, but that feels too obvious. If nobody at that wedding gives them a water-breathing item, I’ll eat my boot. Besides, Alvin isn’t exactly the septum-piercing type.”

Lumy blinked a pleasant cool blue.

Eve let out an aggravated groan, throwing herself back lay against the pile of coins behind her. “I wish Preston were here. He’d know exactly what to give them. Stupid humans and their stupid need for eight hours of sleep.”

The phantasmal remnant flashed green, yellow, and brown at the same time.

“That’s a good point,” Eve said with no real idea what point Lumy had just made. “I don’t need to decide right now. I can just ask Preston before we leave tomorrow. Thanks, Lumy.”

Lumy flashed white.

With newfound confidence, Eve carefully scooped up all three dozen potential wedding gifts, stowing them all in her pack as she counted up the contribution point costs. She had more than enough for the lot, and would return all but the chosen present once the wedding was over.

That daunting task out of the way, at least for the time being, she did the vault vault back to castle proper and made her way back up to her room. The stress of finding a gift no longer weighing upon her, Eve found herself in a state of eager anticipation. It’d been some time since she’d last enjoyed a true celebration, and knowing Alvin and Lina the whole affair gorgeous experience surrounded by incredible food. And alcohol. Also alcohol.

So it was that Eve arrived at her suite, deposited her sack of goodies upon her bed, and turned to her closet with a grin as wide as any. With a quick glance at her standing mirror enchanted to show a rotating reflection, she dove right in.

There were only three more hours until dawn, and she still had so much to do.

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